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A novel behavioral paradigm to assess multisensory processing in mice

Human psychophysical and animal behavioral studies have illustrated the benefits that can be conferred from having information available from multiple senses. Given the central role of multisensory integration for perceptual and cognitive function, it is important to design behavioral paradigms for...

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Autores principales: Siemann, Justin K., Muller, Christopher L., Bamberger, Gary, Allison, John D., Veenstra-VanderWeele, Jeremy, Wallace, Mark T.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4290729/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25628549
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2014.00456
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author Siemann, Justin K.
Muller, Christopher L.
Bamberger, Gary
Allison, John D.
Veenstra-VanderWeele, Jeremy
Wallace, Mark T.
author_facet Siemann, Justin K.
Muller, Christopher L.
Bamberger, Gary
Allison, John D.
Veenstra-VanderWeele, Jeremy
Wallace, Mark T.
author_sort Siemann, Justin K.
collection PubMed
description Human psychophysical and animal behavioral studies have illustrated the benefits that can be conferred from having information available from multiple senses. Given the central role of multisensory integration for perceptual and cognitive function, it is important to design behavioral paradigms for animal models to provide mechanistic insights into the neural bases of these multisensory processes. Prior studies have focused on large mammals, yet the mouse offers a host of advantages, most importantly the wealth of available genetic manipulations relevant to human disease. To begin to employ this model species for multisensory research it is necessary to first establish and validate a robust behavioral assay for the mouse. Two common mouse strains (C57BL/6J and 129S6/SvEv) were first trained to respond to unisensory (visual and auditory) stimuli separately. Once trained, performance with paired audiovisual stimuli was then examined with a focus on response accuracy and behavioral gain. Stimulus durations varied from 50 ms to 1 s in order to modulate the effectiveness of the stimuli and to determine if the well-established “principle of inverse effectiveness” held in this model. Response accuracy in the multisensory condition was greater than for either unisensory condition for all stimulus durations, with significant gains observed at the 300 ms and 100 ms durations. Main effects of stimulus duration, stimulus modality and a significant interaction between these factors were observed. The greatest behavioral gain was seen for the 100 ms duration condition, with a trend observed that as the stimuli became less effective, larger behavioral gains were observed upon their pairing (i.e., inverse effectiveness). These results are the first to validate the mouse as a species that shows demonstrable behavioral facilitations under multisensory conditions and provides a platform for future mechanistically directed studies to examine the neural bases of multisensory integration.
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spelling pubmed-42907292015-01-27 A novel behavioral paradigm to assess multisensory processing in mice Siemann, Justin K. Muller, Christopher L. Bamberger, Gary Allison, John D. Veenstra-VanderWeele, Jeremy Wallace, Mark T. Front Behav Neurosci Neuroscience Human psychophysical and animal behavioral studies have illustrated the benefits that can be conferred from having information available from multiple senses. Given the central role of multisensory integration for perceptual and cognitive function, it is important to design behavioral paradigms for animal models to provide mechanistic insights into the neural bases of these multisensory processes. Prior studies have focused on large mammals, yet the mouse offers a host of advantages, most importantly the wealth of available genetic manipulations relevant to human disease. To begin to employ this model species for multisensory research it is necessary to first establish and validate a robust behavioral assay for the mouse. Two common mouse strains (C57BL/6J and 129S6/SvEv) were first trained to respond to unisensory (visual and auditory) stimuli separately. Once trained, performance with paired audiovisual stimuli was then examined with a focus on response accuracy and behavioral gain. Stimulus durations varied from 50 ms to 1 s in order to modulate the effectiveness of the stimuli and to determine if the well-established “principle of inverse effectiveness” held in this model. Response accuracy in the multisensory condition was greater than for either unisensory condition for all stimulus durations, with significant gains observed at the 300 ms and 100 ms durations. Main effects of stimulus duration, stimulus modality and a significant interaction between these factors were observed. The greatest behavioral gain was seen for the 100 ms duration condition, with a trend observed that as the stimuli became less effective, larger behavioral gains were observed upon their pairing (i.e., inverse effectiveness). These results are the first to validate the mouse as a species that shows demonstrable behavioral facilitations under multisensory conditions and provides a platform for future mechanistically directed studies to examine the neural bases of multisensory integration. Frontiers Media S.A. 2015-01-12 /pmc/articles/PMC4290729/ /pubmed/25628549 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2014.00456 Text en Copyright © 2015 Siemann, Muller, Bamberger, Allison, Veenstra-VanderWeele and Wallace. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution and reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
Siemann, Justin K.
Muller, Christopher L.
Bamberger, Gary
Allison, John D.
Veenstra-VanderWeele, Jeremy
Wallace, Mark T.
A novel behavioral paradigm to assess multisensory processing in mice
title A novel behavioral paradigm to assess multisensory processing in mice
title_full A novel behavioral paradigm to assess multisensory processing in mice
title_fullStr A novel behavioral paradigm to assess multisensory processing in mice
title_full_unstemmed A novel behavioral paradigm to assess multisensory processing in mice
title_short A novel behavioral paradigm to assess multisensory processing in mice
title_sort novel behavioral paradigm to assess multisensory processing in mice
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4290729/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25628549
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2014.00456
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